Future Museum artists in 2017: Ovidiu Anton, Anetta Mona Chișa & Lucia Tkáčová, Andrei Ujică. All are Romanian contemporary artists living in Europe, due to their political and economic migration

In 2017, the Future Museum’s dramaturgy centres around this group of Romanian émigré artists, each of whom were born in Romania and then either settled in another country or spent many years abroad. On May 18 2017, the spring season of the museum will open with Ovidiu Anton’s first solo show in Romanian. Works by Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová will open the summer season at the beginning of July and the series will close with an exhibition of the film director Andrei Ujica.

For the gallery, these migrant or emigrant artists’ experiences of two or more cultural frames give them particular insights, perspectives from which to perceive political, sociological and cultural phenomena differently. This series of exhibitions also aims to underline the contemporary global geopolitical changes which we have been facing since the 1990s, in which visual artists are also participants.

In the visual arts context of Bucharest, the Future Museum is a middle-sized institution which provides a platform for artists to create solo shows in the specific context of the gallery. One of the most important directives of the Future Museum’s programme is to support the mobility of the presentations of Romanian artists.

“I would like to emphasize that Romania’s visual art scene is extremely decentralized and structured into many diverse fields. Since the 1980s, Romania has seen huge political and economic migration, as a result of which, many important Romanian contemporary artists are now living in Europe. Here, as perhaps everywhere, we have witnessed a kind of protective behaviour, a period when Romanian institutions did not pay adequate attention to creators residing abroad,” stressed František Zachoval, the director of the Czech Centre which is hosting the project.

Born in Timişoara, Ovidiu Anton (1982) now lives and works in Vienna, Austria. The main focus of his often political art works is that of highlighting the paradoxical nuances of the world around us.

His work has been presented internationally, in major exhibitions by leading museums and galleries including Koenig 2, Vienna (2017), Kunsthalle Bern (2016), GrazMuseum (2015), OFF-Biennale Budapest (2015), MAK in Vienna (2015) and Tobacco 001 Cultural Centre in Ljubljana (2014).

Artistic duo Anetta Mona Chişa (1975, born in Nădlac, Romania) & Lucia Tkáčová (1977) are returning to Bucharest with their first joint solo show here, for the first time six years, a time in which they have expanded their visual vocabularies and shifted their political and personal interests, focusing more on the fragility of relationships in the world.

A key turn-of-the-century Romanian film director, Andrei Ujica was born in Timișoara in 1951, studied literature and emigrated to Germany in 1981. There, in collaboration with Harun Farocki, he created his first film, Videograms of a Revolution – a montage film created from over 125 hours of amateur and news footage – which would set the style for all of his future films. Although Ujică is a film-maker, his works often appear in gallery contexts, such as the Marble Palace, St. Petersburg (2016), MoMA PS1, New York City (2014), the 16th Sydney Biennale (2008), and the Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, Berlin (2005).

As Raluca Voinea, director of tranzit.ro/Bucharest and one of the exhibition’s curators explains: “While Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová still address some of their recurrent topics, such as capital and revolution, here they search for new ways not to reproduce the pitfalls of contemporary critical art, which usually analyses the effects without envisaging the symptoms. In their exhibition at the Future Museum, the artists will also introduce us to the new materialities with which they are currently working.”

In 2016, Future Museum began its activity with the Moldavian curator, artist and educator Tatiana Fiodorova’s first solo show in Bucharest, then presented works by the artist duo Mona Vătămanu & Florin Tudor and supported their film essay ‘Gagarin’s Tree’, an interview with the philosopher Ovidiu Țichindeleanu about post-communist conditions in the Republic of Moldova.

This event organized by the Future Museum (Czech Centre Bucharest), with the support of BCR and Staropramen. Partners: Austrian Cultural Forum Bucharest and tranzit.ro/Bucuresti.